


Stargazing

by MeredithBrody



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 09:36:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeredithBrody/pseuds/MeredithBrody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In preparation for his likely assignment to an alien embassy, Jonathan decides to take his daughter stargazing, after some prodding from Erika.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stargazing

**Author's Note:**

> This was mostly written for Icka, Ana and Kuka, my Jorika buds. It took a long time to write. This is semi based on something my mother and I used to do when I was a child living in Wales. I miss those days.

He pulled up at the clearing that for so long had been one of his only retreats. It was somewhere Erika had discovered once, and shown to him more than 25 years earlier. Ever since that day the two of them had made it a big part of who they were on Earth. Even since having their children they’d made the time to come out here, when one or the other of them had been struggling. With the changes he was already bringing to their private lives, visits here had grown for the two of them. It was a safe place for them to argue where the kids weren’t going to see them. They had settled almost everything in their relationship shouting at one another among these dunes and under these stars, and had always gone home happier than they’d been when they left.

Tonight though, tonight he was here for a very different reason. He knew that the call to move off-planet could come any day, and while he didn’t want to make his daughter worry about that before she needed too, he wanted to share as much time with her as he could. Erika had brought the idea up with him a few nights earlier, and at her urging he agreed, he thought she might have been looking forward to a night off now that Henry was sleeping through the night properly too. So tonight he’d packed Serena into the old car they still had and had set out to this place under the guise of going on an ‘adventure’ with his only daughter.

Serena seemed less than impressed when he stopped the car and started pulling things out of the trunk. She got out of her door and looked at him like he’d possibly lost his mind, staying close to the door until he’d got the blanket down and sat on it. “Daddy where are we?” She asked, still not really stepping too far away from the car.

“Somewhere your mom and I come a lot.” He answered, smiling to her as he did and motioning for her to come and join him. Surely by this age she was used to his slightly eccentric bahaviour and would just roll with it.

Instead she just continued staring at him, then gave him a look that reminded him strongly of her mother. “Why?” She asked, a hint of suspicion in her voice. Jon respected that, and was glad to know that she’d been brought up to question anything that seemed suspect.

He looked back to her and smiled again, patting the blanket besides him with another grin. “You said you wanted to come and see the stars.” He looked up above them, where the sky was as clear as anyone could hope for. There were many reasons this was his favourite place to come, and the view was only on of them. “This is my favourite place on Earth to see them.” He sighed a little as Serena finally gave in and joined him on the blanket.

He watched as she looked around the area from their current vantage point. All around them were dunes and open spaces, and not a single house or home for miles. “It’s pretty. Won’t mommy be mad we’re out so late?” Serena asked, and he could understand her concern, Erika didn’t really like waiting up if she didn’t know where they were.

“She knows where we are.” He smiled, trying to reassure her on that point. “Come on, lets go set up our nighttime picnic.” He pulled the backpack he’d stuffed full of both their favourite things in front of him and started pulling things out and displaying them on the blanket.

Serena’s eyes lit up as he put a flask in front of her, pulling one of his own out. The two held vastly different liquids, and he knew Serena wouldn’t appreciate his. “You brought cocoa?” She asked excitedly, and he was glad he’d listened to Erika on that point.

“Of course I did. Come on.” He scoffed slightly and grinned, then laid back with his arms behind his head. Looking up at the stars above them. How many times had he done this with his father when he’d been Serena’s age. Many of his life goals had been formed on nights just like this one.

After a few minutes later Serena laid down beside him and shuffled up until she could rest her head on his arm too. They were both silent a while, looking to the stars until Serena elbowed him gently then spoke. “Dad.”

“Yeah?” He replied, feeling calmer than he normally would when Serena addressed him with quite such an inquisitive tone. That normally put him on edge that he’d give the wrong answer, but tonight there wouldn’t be a wrong answer. No matter what she asked. Only the truth.

She sighed a little, another gesture she had inherited from her mother. Whenever Erika was going to ask a potentially hard question she would sigh, and it was one of the most endearing things their daughter could have inherited. After a second sigh she sat up and looked at him. “Can you tell me all the stars you’ve been to?”

“I can try. I’ve not been to that many though.” That was true. He’d been to a lot. More than any other human that he was certain of. He or Erika had made First Contact with more tha half of Earth’s Federation allies. Some of them still wanted them on their negotiating teams, maybe it was the familiarity. Even though he hadn’t been to all the stars, he still had stories. “I have plenty of stories though.”

“Can we make up stories about the ones you didn’t go to?” Serena asked, excited. He couldn’t help but smile at that. Stories, that was what he’d always done here too. Maybe Serena would be making her future dreams as they laid here talking.

“Sure. Where do you want me to start?”

“How about that one.” Serena pointed to the brightest star in the sky. He shifted his arms slightly so he and Serena were on the same level and he could squeeze gently.

“That’s Polaris. I’ve never been there, but you see that little star just to the left?”

“Yeah.” Serena whispered, slearly already a little in awe that she was going to be told these stories. These stories Erika and he had always hinted at being for when she was older. She was six, plenty old enough to hear these stories, providing he didn’t tell them in too much detail. He thought how to sanitise the stories for Serena, and decided making them each into a fairytale might be a better idea.

“I’ve been there. Your uncle Trip imagined there were scary rock people trying to take over the ship.”

“Did you beat them?”

“Of course I did Bun.” He spent a happy hour sharing heavily redacted stories with his daughter about the places he’d been and the things he’d seen. Proud that he could show her all of these things that had been such a large part of his life.

After a while Serena asked a question he hadn’t really prepared for, but it was at least one he could answer truthfully. “Daddy, why did you and mommy come here?”

“To look at the stars too.” He admitted, and that was true. He and Erika had laid looking at the stars here more times than he could count. “This was where we came and made all our plans and talked about all your dreams. We decided about having you and Henry here.” The thoughts of everything the two of them had done made him suddenly want to get home, he missed his wife and just wanted to see her.

“I like this place, can we come again?” That question was answered in his mind before she’d even finished asking. They needed a family trip here soon. All of them.

“Soon, Bunny. We’ll bring mommy and Henry too. We’ll tell them all our stories.” He smiled, and it was obvious Serena was excited about the idea of sharing her stories with her mother and her brother.

He managed to get everything they’d brought with them into the car, and listened as Serena carried on making stories up out of the window most of the way back to the city, when she went quiet he looked back and wasn’t at all surprised to see she’d fall asleep in her seat.

He was glad to see that at least the living room light was still on when they got back to their house, he picked his sleeping daughter up and left the rest to bring in after they’d all been to sleep. He hoped that his wife had had the foresight to leave the door open, if she hadn’t this could be bad for all of them, as he’d end up waking Serena up in his efforts to get in. He was grateful to immediately find the door was open. “She have fun?” Was called almost the second he stepped through, and he wondered if Erika had waited up just to find out if Serena had had fun.

“She loved it, she fell asleep on the way home.” He smiled, shutting the front door quietly with his foot and taking a few steps out toward the living room, his smile growing as he heard the springs in the couch groaning as Erika got up.

Erika smiled as she came to the corridor to meet them. “Good, she might sleep all night tonight.” She gave a wider smile then took Serena off him, and they both smiled at the little moan of disagreement the six-year-old let out as she settled again. “I’ll put her to bed, you go get something warm to drink.” She patted his cheek gently with her spare hand, and he just watched her walk down the corridor and once again he was happy that he had this family to come home too.

“Hey, Erika.” He called before she got to the stairs, and he could almost sense the sigh she’d managed to hold in. She probably just wanted to get Serena into bed then go to sleep herself, he forgot how busy she was these days.

“Jonathan?” She asked, turning back and putting her hand on Serena’s back to keep her steady. He just looked at his wife and daughter a second then jogged forward to meet her again.

“Have I told you I love you recently.” He smiled then leant forward to give her a gentle kiss. If one thing had been proven tonight, it was how entwinned his and Erika’s lives had always been, and now he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do any of this without her. Almost half of his stories had lead back to reconnecting with her, and that was what was important.


End file.
